OCs: Arik (HD/Clean/Previous versions/Sketches/Old Comic in HD/Stories and Extra Lore/CSP File)

-"Who dares summon me? Arikhmagennon! Harbinger of Chaos! The Incarnated Corruption! Herald of all that is..."

Something was wrong.

Let's see... Puff of sulfurous smoke... Check. Surrounded by robed figures... Check. The usual. But why in Hell where they SO BIG? Were these nut jobs a cult of giants or something?

And even worse... Why did he sound so... Well, definitely not like the roaring gates of Hell opening. More like... All he could think of was... A kitten?

What on Hell was going on?!

The figures seemed shocked too. Looking at one another, dumbfounded, and then to this big tome... Yes, the big tome was another classic. Humans were so predictable...

After a while, one of the cultists came forward and with a hesitation that had little to do with the usual primal terror Arikhmagennon was used to see when he was summoned into the mortal plane, and declaimed:

"Oh! Your vileness! We... I mean... Let's be honest here. We were expecting something a tad bigger. No offense, but you don't look like the Harbinger of Chaos. If anything a bit of a mess, mind you, but Chaos seems to be stretching it a bit far. Again... No offense."

What was this vermin mortal talking about?! He started feeling the vastness of his anger growing by the second. If these worms thought, even for a second, that anything less than begging on their knees would grant them any gifts they were DEAD wrong. But this disrespect...?! He was going to level whatever civilization these morons came crawling from to the ground and turn their soil into ashes... If only he could muster the power that usually came with these feelings...

"If anything... Oh! Evilness!" Continued the human looking around to their fellow cultists for support. "You look kindda... Cute?"

Cute... Cute? CUTE?! That's it. The surge of pure hellish anger came roaring from within Arikhmagennon, anticipating the usual eruption of hellfire and sulfur... Any moment now... But for some reason, this time it came out more as a weak poof of a flame that flickered and died in a small spout of fire.

...

WHAT WAS GOING ON? Why weren't all these humans begging for mercy? Could it be...? No... Impossible. But... NO! NO!!!

"You bunch of morons! You absolute useless babbling bags of meat! YOU BOTCHED THE SUMMONING RITUAL! What am I supposed to do with a body like this?" The anger of Arik was absolute now, but the only obvious effect of this was his voice cracking a higher pitch.

The cultist looked quite offended by this point.

"Look, mate. It's not like we do this everyday, OK? And anyway, we were supposed to be summoning a huge arch demon and be granted infernal gifts! What are we gonna do with an imp that looks like it could use some belly rubs?"

From the back of a room, one of the cultists, hesitant, raised their hand.

"Actually... I know of a place..."

___________________________________

Arikhmagennon. Archduke of Hell. Harbinger of Chaos. The Defiler...

No more.

Along the centuries groups of humans have been foolishly summoning him in order to get infernal gifts, favors... Power. All those times Arikhmagennon has made use of those mortals to bring corruption and havoc to the human world. This mighty demon is now trapped in a small quite powerless body here at the mortal plane.

During the last summoning, some cultists managed to, somehow, botch the ritual so badly he was brought to this plane in a puny form, devoid of almost all his power and looking rather... cute? These greedy cultists, who were expecting power and riches, disappointed, used him as a chip to get some kind of bargain. An thus, Arikhmagennon. Archduke of Hell. Harbinger of Chaos. The Defiler... Came to be Arik, the impish boytoy at The Black Mirror.

And he's oh so angry about it.

He's angry about the smug human that runs the place and that puts him in the most humiliating predicaments all the time, unfazed by his threats of making brimstone and hellfire rain over him forever. (Whenever he has free use of his mouth, that is...)

He's angry about the couple of identical humans that have made a habit of torturing him whenever their master isn't around, always whenever he has no way to show them what true torture is. Oh what wouldn't he give to get hold of those two free of bind or restraint...

But most of all, he's angry about the things they make him do. The things they make him feel. Every moan or whine they take from him. How can it be that he, who have corrupted so many souls, gets turned on by these puny humans playing with him? How dare they put these thoughts in him!

One day he'll escape. He'll be free... And even if it's in this pitiful form, there'll be hell to pay.

______________________

Arik was intended as one of the adoptable characters in the last Slave Auction I held. That version was kind of a blank generic character as that usually serves the purpose of allowin the buyer of the character to build some more background and personality on the character. That's where the little story snipet from the beggining of this post comes from and, also, the Original Design.

HD Version:

Extra Progress Shot and Original PSD file:

Demon

Seeing as no one was interested in him, I decided to adapt him into The Black Mirror and turn him into one of Lord Black's slaves.

Design wise I changed him into something with a tad more personality, leaning towards the cuteness spectrum. I also decided the demonic/humanoid traits would be fluid and change depending on what I wanted to portrait or the convenience of the work. As a rule of thumb I think of him turning more demonic the angrier he gets, but it's more of a guideline than a self impossed rule.

Thus, I started working on some sketches for the new design:

Generally speaking, leaner and cuter. *^_^*

Adding hair, but keeping the idea of it going momentarily ablaze if he reaches peek anger.

I think of him as being a tad feline or ferret like. You know... Fluid flexible, nimble and sharp on the edges. :P

And like that, I came up with the New Version of the character, in my humble opinion, a lot more interesting.

With that, I wanted to do some piece of artwork with the character, as often, I create characters for them to be forgotten and sent to the never-again and I totally wanted to avoid that for my brand new character.

This was a bit of a disaster. The character's concept wasn't polished enough, The Black Mirror had been a thing for years, but I hadn't properly developed it at this point... So I knew I wanted to do something sequential, but not too complex, in a setting I wouldn't be able to tell in this super small thing... So yeah. Pretty much a perfect recipe for disaster. And yeah, it's pretty bad.

Sketch:

Comic:

The idea is totally unoriginal, the sequence is a mess, the narrative botched, the angles unimaginative and the drawing itself is pretty tame... All of that in a basically 4 panels comic. It's almost meritorious being able to do so many things wrong in such a small thing. :P

At any rate, here's the final character sheet:

HD Version:

Clean (No texts):

Original CSP Files:

Arik Concept Sheet

Arik Concept

And for some Extra Lore:

- We've seen that his tail is quite an erogenous zone. Handle with care tho. He can use it as kind of a sharp whip.

- Due to his demonic nature, he has an extreme sex drive (archdukes of hell are used to have many slaves at their disposal so that's not usually an issue). This drives him crazy when denied orgasm for periods of time. This has been used often as ways of humiliation during his stay in The Black Mirror. The Great Arikhmagennon isn't used to have to ask (or even beg) for release. >:3

- Even in his state, Arikhmagennon is a dangerous specimen. His new frame doesn't come without perks, and he has astounding nimbleness and speed when not in preventive bondage. He will always try to escape and will attack his captors if allowed the chance. Special caution is needed to deal with him. The most effective way to avoid incidents has proven to be keeping him in permanent, inescapable chastity, which would grant compliance, but be aware that he would try to escape by all means at his disposal and will recur to violence or deception without hesitation.

- WARNING: Do not store or carry close to flammable liquids, gases, or explosive materials.

- Some would say Lord Black had anything to do with the defective ritual that brought Arik in his current state... But that can't be true, right?